Right-wing socialism

Conservative or right-wing socialism is a term used by some right-wing movements and politicians to describe support for social solidarity as opposed to individualism, commercialism, and laissez-faire economics. The term is also used, more commonly but distinctly, to refer to moderate, social democratic forms of socialism when contrasted with Marxism–Leninism and other more radical left-wing alternatives.

It is necessary to explain that when one speaks of the P.S.U.C. ‘line’ one really means the Communist Party ‘line’. The P.S.U.C. (Partit Socialista Unificat de Catalunya) was the Socialist Party of Catalonia; it had been formed at the beginning of the war by the fusion of various Marxist parties, including the Catalan Communist Party, but it was now entirely under Communist control and was affiliated to the Third International. Elsewhere in Spain no formal unification between Socialists and Communists had taken place, but the Communist viewpoint and the Right-wing Socialist viewpoint could everywhere be regarded as identical.

George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia, New York: NY, Harvest Book, Harcourt Brace & Company (1980) chapter 5, pp. 58-59, first published in 1938.

When [Hitler] talked of National-Socialism what he really meant was military-Socialism, Socialism within a framework of military discipline or, in civilian terms, police-Socialism.

Ernst Hanfstaengl, Hitler: The Memoir of a Nazi Insider Who Turned Against the Führer, New York: NY, Arcade Publishing, 2011, pp. 70-71

[T]here were from the beginning two different strands within Socialism: one was the Right-wing, authoritarian strand, from Saint-Simon down, which glorified statism, hierarchy, and collectivism…

Murray Rothbard, “Left and Right: The Prospects for Liberty,” Left and Right (Spring, 1965) pp. 4-22.

‘Conservative’ or ‘right-wing socialism’ can be defined as that type in which institutional aggression is employed to maintain the social status quo and the privileges certain people or groups enjoy. The fundamental objective of right-wing socialism is to keep things as they are by preventing the free exercise entrepreneurship and creative human action from disrupting the pre-established framework of social organization.

From the moment Mussolini declared himself in favor of the war, Italian Socialists smeared him for his heresy. ... From the beginning, fascism was dubbed as right-wing not because it necessarily was right-wing but because the communist left thought this was the best way to punish apostasy (and, even if it was right-wing in some long forgotten doctrinal sense, fascism was still right-wing socialism).

Jonah Goldberg, Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Change, Three Rivers Press (2009) p. 44.